dpodoll68
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Howard is a closer comparison to Ewing for sure. Both were very good college and pro players and had NBA assistant experience. The points that Bad seems to be forgetting are that Ewing is in the HOF, is the best player in Georgetown history, is widely considered to be one of the best players in college and pro basketball history, won a national title at Georgetown...I could go on. This is entirely ignoring his 15-year stint as an assistant in the NBA. Meanwhile, Johnson was a mediocre college player on mostly poor teams (not even remotely good enough to play professionally overseas, much less the NBA), and has followed that by being a mediocre assistant on mostly poor teams. He has zero experience in the NBA as a player or coach. Ewing has 32 years playing and coaching at the highest level of the sport, only marginally less time than Johnson has been alive.Juwan Howard is similar to Ewing. He and Ewing had very similar resumes, alum, long time nba player and asst coach. Again nothing against Ben, its just a fact he did not have the resume of these coaches.
While not perfect, the closest analogue I could think of for the Gophers would be if we had hired McHale. While that likely would have ended up being a terrible hire, much like Ewing, it would have been lauded as a coup by alumni, media, etc. and would have had many here creaming their jeans at the prospect. The fact that anyone is trying to equate hiring Ben f'ing Johnson with hiring Patrick Ewing is mind-boggling to me - almost as mind-boggling as the hire of Johnson itself.